In just three years the revenue generated by the anti-piracy outfit reduced from $92.8 million to $49.6 million. The decreased budget is a direct result of the major Hollywood studios cutting back on their MPAA funding. In the same period membership dues dropped from $84.7 million to $41.5 million, more than a 50% decline.

The filing (embedded below) includes some interesting tidbits. It's not at all surprising to see that the MPAA funds the Copyright Alliance, but I had not seen before that it funds ITIF. ITIF was the think tank who was the major "intellectual backer" of SOPA/PIPA. They had published the first paper that more or less suggested the approach found in SOPA/PIPA, and when the MPAA was absolutely desperate for technology "experts" who could argue that SOPA wouldn't break DNS, the only people they rolled out were ITIF staff members. It's not surprising that the MPAA funded them, but I don't recall that being disclosed anywhere previously.

Also, as with the RIAA's salaries, it's pretty ridiculous to see the MPAA complaining about being rich as proof that someone must be breaking the law, when its top execs are all making pretty large salaries. Nearly every person listed in their list of key employees/highest compensated employees is clearly way far north into the 1% of most highly compensated Americans.

And all that while its budget keeps getting slashed. Perhaps the studios are recognizing that they're better off no longer throwing good money after bad. Of course, it's noteworthy that a number of people on the list ended up leaving the MPAA. Former CEO Dan Glickman left earlier than expected, apparently due to dissatisfaction from the studio heads, and a number of others left as well. So it will be interesting when the 2011 report finally comes out to see if they studios fed money back into the MPAA once Chris Dodd was brought in.

from the didn't-see-that-coming dept

Back in 2005, we wrote about how Google was sued because AdWords users were being charged more than their "daily budgets" for ads on the site. The case initially got plenty of attention after pretty much all of the mainstream press reported that the Howard Stern listed as a plaintiff was "the Howard Stern" of radio fame -- though, that was later disputed. Either way, the case itself (famous Howard Stern or not) was still interesting. Since advertisers pay based on clicks, and the price of the clicks isn't always known until the click happens, the "daily budget" that any advertiser sets for ads is impossible to match exactly. Thus, there will be days when the daily budget is exceeded -- but that wasn't acceptable to those suing, who found the whole thing misleading. After a court refused (twice) to give summary judgment to Google, it looks like the company has decided to throw $20 million at the problem to make it go away via settlement (a decently large chunk, of course, goes to the class action lawyers who brought the suit). This is a bit of a surprise, since you would think Google has a pretty clear case, as the terms of its agreement with advertisers was pretty clear on what was going on -- but perhaps Google thinks it's smarter to just pay up and keep advertisers happy.